My lifelong interest in art has paralleled a long career working independently as a designer for art museums and book publishers.
Today, working primarily as an artist from my studio in Woodstock, Vermont, I show my paintings at our Vermont gallery, on this website, and privately at my painting studio. In addition to concentrating on my artwork, I am also involved in the design of catalogue raisonnés, focusing on modern artists.
Artist
My oil paintings reflect ongoing explorations in creative process to further personal artistic development in still-life, landscape, and abstract works that are inspired by the natural environment where I live and work in rural Woodstock, Vermont.
Gallery
Since 2009 I have overseen the art gallery that I developed with my wife Ann in association with glassmaker Simon Pearce in Quechee, Vermont, where today I feature my work and a collection of antiquarian objects.
Book Designer
Working independently from my design office in Vermont since 1991, I have designed and produced over two hundred art books and exhibition catalogues for publishers such as Hatje Cantz, Berlin; and Rizzoli International Publications, New York; and for art museums such as the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge; List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover; and the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; and over forty exhibition catalogues for the Studio Art Exhibition Program at Dartmouth College to accompany the program’s series of artist residencies and shows.
Catalogue Raisonné
Over the last twenty years, I have designed a series of catalogue raisonnés in three languages—Chinese, French, and English—as part of the Archives of Modern Chinese Art, a publishing project by The Li Ching Cultural and Educational Foundation in Taipei, Taiwan, that began in 2001 with Sanyu: Catalogue Raisonné, Oil Paintings, the first-ever published catalogue raisonné on a Chinese artist. To date, we have collaborated on eight titles.
Author, Photographer, and Designer
In addition to my work as an artist and graphic designer, I am also an author, photographer, and designer of books on art and design, focusing on Vermont subjects.
In 2005, I created with my wife Ann Suokko, Pastoral, a journal that features the individuals, organizations, and products inspired by the fertile and creative environments in Vermont. In 2017 we introduced A New Pastoral, a quarterly home cooking journal.
I am coauthor, photographer, and designer of A Way of Living (Simon Pearce, 2009 and 2019); author, photographer, and designer of Simon Pearce: Design for Living (Rizzoli, 2016), and Shelburne Farms: House, Gardens, Farm, and Barns (Rizzoli, 2017); creator and publisher of Peter Brooke: The Nature of Memory and Experience (Valise, 2017), Peter France (Valise, 2017), and Marsh, Billings, Rockefeller in Woodstock (Valise, 2017).
Early Work and Education
As former senior designer at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1988–1991), I oversaw the museum’s publication design, graphic design, and exhibition graphics, and while there, was also art director of Design Quarterly, co-published with The MIT Press. I was actively involved in the creation of the landmark exhibition Graphic Design in America: A Visual Language History, as well as the exhibition design and catalogue design (Abrams, New York, 1989) for the show.
In 1985 as art director at CW Communications, a computer magazine publishing company in Peterborough, NH, one highlight was my interview with Andy Warhol at the artist’s studio in New York where I assisted the artist to create a digital self-portrait for Amiga World magazine. The interview has since been translated into several languages and in 2004 was reissued in I’ll be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews: 1962–1987 (Carroll & Graf, New York).
I studied art and design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (MFA, 1988) and Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, Massachusetts (BFA 1982).
“My oil paintings reflect the creative responses to how I see and feel. If there is a common denominator in my work, it is the conceptual interpretation of quietude and beauty influenced by the earthly rhythm of my immediate surroundings where I live and work in rural Vermont. I paint with imaginative expression, pleased that others may share an appreciation of similar ideas that are important to my work—tranquility, splendor, and simplicity.”
Born and raised in the United States in a small town in Massachusetts where he developed an interest in art at an early age, Suokko studied art and design, graduating from the Massachusetts College of Art (BFA) in Boston, Massachusetts in 1982, and the Cranbrook Academy of Art (MFA) in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 1988. . . .